My weekly round up

What I do to ease millennial guilt

My weekly round up

Chicken and chorizo stew

First off apologies for another awful attempt at food photos, my family hate waiting whilst I take them.

This time of year has really sparked an eagerness within me to start cooking more wholesome and nutritional foods. It perhaps because I am not as active in Autumn and Winter, I am not as busy in the hours after work, I am not racing to the stable yard to spend three hours with the horses. It is no longer too hot to be put off eating cooked meals, or I am no longer home too late to eat with other people. In fact, at the moment my lifestyle has turned on its head. I try to get everything done earlier in the day, dogs will be walked at lunch, exercise is back at the gym either before work or straight after and the horses are already fed by the time 5 pm rolls around. In essence, I have a lot more time on my hands to think about and prepare what I am eating, and all of a sudden toast or pasta just doesn’t seem that appealing or good for me.

As I have mentioned probably 1000 times on here, (I know I can hear your yawns) I have been making an effort to cook more, especially vegetables. Not only is my skin so much healthier, I don’t struggle with that 3 pm slump, mornings are no longer difficult when my alarm goes off, I genuinely feel as though I have so much more energy. It also makes me want to eat healthy all day long, I have returned back to my spinach packed breakfasts and I am not reaching for the chocolate as I was before. But the one benefit of cooking this way I have loved the most is the social side. Cooking up big batches of soup or slow-cooked meals gives me the opportunity to send family or friends a message in the morning to see if they want to join, knowing it is no extra effort and it hasn’t cost me a fortune to feed people.

In an effort to get use to the slow cooker, I found this recipe online, I didn’t follow it exactly and there are some steps and ingredients I would change if I made it again but these are the bare bones of it. The original recipe was a video Jamie Oliver shared for a chicken and chorizo stew.

What I used – Plenty for four adults

250g of brown rice – If I was going to slow cook it again I would use paella rice or I would add the rice at the end

2 red onions

1 red pepper

Spicy Chorizo sausage

1 pack of chicken thighs

Smoked paprika

2 cloves of garlic

A squeeze of lemon

salt and pepper for seasoning

300 ml of chicken stock

500 ml of passata sauce

Method

Fry the onion, red pepper and garlic cloves in a pan, then add the chorizo sausage.

prepare 300 ml of chicken stock

Add the onion, red pepper, garlic and chorizo, paprika into the slow cooker pot, adding your 250g of rice and mix together. If you are using brown rice skip this step. I added the rice and we all liked it but if you don’t want your rice too cooked I would add it later on.

Add your 300 ml of chicken stock

Pour the passata sauce and mix together

Add chicken thighs, season accordingly and mix

Leave on a low heat depending on how long you will be away for, don’t leave chicken thighs for more than3-4 hours.

And that is it! Do you have any easy slow goodrecipes you would recommend?